Search results

There is a persistent belief that COVID-19 is "like seasonal flu." While there are similarities, the clinical course is very different.

The recently-passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act includes a surprise: a loophole for surprise billing in testing for COVID-19.

No, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not a biological weapon. But that doesn't mean the virus didn't escape from a laboratory. A growing body of circumstantial evidence indicates that very well may be what happened.

The numbers associated with COVID-19, its infectivity, hospital admissions, deaths, are all being studied like tea leaves for any pattern or trend. And the numbers vary quite a bit. Those variations are often ascribed to the veracity of the source or some underlying agenda of hope or fearmongering, and occasionally to a mathematical error.

For those wanting to see the relative contribution of traffic and power generation to air pollution, consider this picture of Los Angeles. LA sits in a basin surrounded by mountains, I grew up there and can remember days when you can actually see the mountains.

Different countries may appear to have different death rates, but only because they have applied different sampling and reporting policies to their accounting efforts. It's not necessarily because they are managing the virus any better, or that the virus has infected fewer, or more, people.

The biology of the virus will help us learn how to fight it.

How well we do in assessing the economic outcomes of the COVID-19 lockdown will determine how well we do in the next match. And there will be a next match.

Q: Where do you go to find overpaid, under-sane professors, talking about chemistry when they know nothing about it?
A: MIT, the home of Dr. Stephanie Seneff, who has spent a career making up nonsense about glyphosate. And she's outdone herself this time: Glyphosate causes COVID. Nope, not kidding.

Fred Singer was an impressive scientist with a great list of achievements. He will be missed.

A new review article published in The Lancet concludes that school closures are ineffective at controlling coronavirus epidemics. What else could be wrong with the conventional wisdom about COVID-19?

Without a doubt, our world is now quieter since sheltering began, and we can imagine that the air smells sweeter. These are good things but purchased at the terrible costs of COVID-19 suffering and death and devastation of the global economy. The environmental scientist in me thought about lessons to be learned from our present situation.

Stories of "Chicken Little" and how we "model" our world. Should we always be the center of those models? In our moment of existential dread, new data seems to suggest we got the dinosaur extinction wrong. Finally, in six months, we will have our first national election in the time of COVID-19; how should we prepare?

In the frantic fight to get an effective antiviral into the hands of a terrified world, there's a new kid on the block. This one is called N-hydroxycytidine and it's rather interesting. NHC is a potent inhibitor of coronavirus replication in cells, it's really easy to synthesize and it'll protect you from the virus. (That is, if you're a lab rodent.)

"Although the epidemiology of COVID-19 is evolving, we have determined that there is a large overlap between causes of deaths of COVID-19 patients and the diseases that are affected by long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5).”
It is a great leap from overlap to claiming PM2.5 results in "excess" mortality from COVID-19. But what the heck, why let the fear generated by COVID-19 go to waste?

Even though we've been isolated from each other and the world at large, that doesn't mean we here at ACSH haven't been making our voices heard across the media landscape. In fact, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging on, our views on medical and scientific matters have been in even greater demand. And it's our view that there's no better way to spend our working hours at home than to provide clarity and calming guidance during this coronavirus health crisis.

Among the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is how cumbersome one‐​size‐​fits‐​all regulations, administered by an impersonal bureaucracy, hamper a rapid and flexible response to an evolving public health emergency. The U.S. Navy Medical Corps provides us with a recent example.

Twitter captures geolocation data in about 3% of tweets. Two researchers from Johns Hopkins released a report on the changes in our social mobility. How much we are traveling, based on that dataset?

Scammers like to scare the elderly using coronavirus and Social Security fraud. Now, the AARP likes to scare old people over the food they eat.

Everyone take a deep breath and relax. During these crazy times, people are making all kinds of wild predictions about what drug or vaccine will work. Dr. David Shlaes takes a sobering look at the chances for any of these therapies to work. It's not as easy as you'd think. We should all lower our expectations a bit.

Vaccines, antivirals, and antibodies are all possible strategies to treat the novel coronavirus. When will these potential COVID-19 therapies be available? And will they work?

An occasional feature where a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

We will soon be approaching the moment when, despite all of our best efforts, we'll be one ventilator shy of what's needed. It's now time to share what critical-care physicians and nurses have known for some time, and what they're planning to do when that moment arrives.

For a simple drug, there sure is a lot of controversy surrounding hydroxychloroquine -- a malaria drug that's one of a handful of repurposed drugs being evaluated as potential anti-coronavirus treatments. However, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) doesn't look especially promising. Dr. Katherine Seley-Radtke, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, explains.

While the White House struggles to track and trace those who had close contact with President Trump and infectious others in his entourage, India is reporting on the transmission dynamics of nearly 600,000 exposed individuals. Let's take a look at what's being learned within the world’s biggest democracy.